Semmes incorporation threatens towing companies' business with Mobile

View full size(Press-Register/John David Mercer) Semmes residents voted to incorporate their community, but their success threatens the business model of local towing companies. (Press-Register/John David Mercer)

MOBILE, Alabama -- Not much changed for most folks in Semmes when it officially became its own city last month. But for a trio of automobile wreckers based in the community, a decades-old business model came crashing to a halt.

Prior to incorporation, each of the companies was on the city of Mobile’s approved wrecker list, a rotation that police use to select the towing companies that haul away damaged or seized cars after wrecks or traffic stops.

A place on the list is not exactly a golden ticket — there are some 40 companies that share the wrecker calls — but it does provide a steady stream of income.

Mobile requires all the wreckers to be located inside its police jurisdiction, which extends 3 miles beyond its city limits. The boundary used to include about two-thirds of Semmes, but was pushed back when Semmes incorporated and gained a police jurisdiction of its own.

As such, when Mobile County Probate Judge Don Davis declared Semmes a city on May 2, the wreckers in the Semmes jurisdiction lost the right to haul cars for Mobile.

Two of the 3 wreckers that were drawn out of Mobile’s jurisdiction appealed to the City Council on Tuesday in an effort to be reinstated.

Jeff Presnall said that getting knocked off the list means the end of his Harrelson’s Wrecker Service, which has been a growing concern for 35 years. A full 95 percent of his towing work comes from the city, he said in an interview.

Presnall said that he grew up in the towing business and took over Harrelson’s after his stepfather, R.B. Harrelson, had a stroke. He even lives next to the holding yard so as to comply with a city rule that says wreckers have to have someone on site 24-hours per day.

“If you aren’t able to help people on a daily basis, it’s not the right line of work for you,” he said.

Police say the wreckers would be out of their control

Presnall said it’s impractical for him to pick up and move because his land is paid for and it would be hard to find another property that is both affordable and properly zoned for a wrecker yard.

Tommy Gordon, of Tommy Gordon Towing, who also appealed, said that he’s in a slightly better position.

Gordon owns 2 other wrecking companies with locations in the Mobile jurisdiction that will stay on the list.

His main location, however, is in Semmes, where he also runs a salvage and scrap yard, and, like Presnall, lives next door.

The salvage and scrap operations can survive, Gordon said, but will suffer from the lost source of junk cars. Worse than that, however, is the fact that his Semmes wrecker service got 2 to 3 towing jobs from the city every day.

Gary Smith, owner of the third Semmes wrecking company, S.O.S. Towing, said he opened a location in Mobile so as not to lose out on his spot on the city’s list. He said he hopes that the city will still let him tow from his Semmes location.

The City Council said it couldn’t grant the wrecking companies’ appeals without changing the ordinance that governs them, which states explicitly that approved towing operations must be based in the city.

Wanda Rahman, the Police Department’s attorney, told the council that the department would prefer that the ordinance remain unchanged.

Police Chief Micheal T. Williams said that the department cannot effectively regulate wrecking companies that are out of its police jurisdiction.

The Press-Register asked for a clearer explanation of why having a location outside the jurisdiction posed a problem, but Rahman, through a spokesman, declined to comment.

The City Council will consider whether to amend the ordinance during a meeting of its Public Safety Committee on Tuesday afternoon.